Microsoft solutions for Connected Systems

Real-time business analysis: Systems, information and operations departments are siloed, causing hospitality companies to struggle to obtain a comprehensive and real-time view of the business. This causes them to miss opportunities to increase not only the share of wallet and cross-sell during a guest's visit, but also impacts brand loyalty and referrals long-term.

Back office: The Microsoft platform, supported by Microsoft Dynamics AX, for the Back Office provides a scalable and manageable infrastructure that supports enterprise resource planning activities corporate-wide. It's highly cost-effective and efficient.

Application centric architecture: In most cases the underlying technology used to manage daily operations of each property is a set of disparate applications, each functioning independently and supported by its own set of servers and data stores. This leads to additional expenses managing the applications and hardware (and carbon footprint) required to support the enterprise.

Guest-centric architecture: Utilizing the Microsoft platform and Microsoft Dynamics CRM at the infrastructure layer provides the platform to manage and enhance the entire guest experience. This delivers a cohesive environment for property management, guest experience enhancement, and business insight. The platform also leverages Cloud Computing so enterprises can centrally run their infrastructure platform, reducing costs at the property level.

Integration between applications: Most line of business applications -- used to manage accounting, registration, reservations and other services -- lack integration and the ability to scale beyond existing point-to-point interfaces hindering real-time integration of operations and guest data. Creating interfaces between applications is cost prohibitive and can affect availability of systems on the property.

Integration: The Microsoft platform, employing the Managed Service Engine (MSE), enables real-time connectivity of legacy and disparate systems providing one coordination point of communication between applications. This enables business process monitoring and activity management to streamline operations, create efficiencies, and optimize system load.

Systems management and monitoring: Fully automated infrastructures provide property and corporate staff (whether IT, business, or support) with alerts at every level of the property enabling staff to monitor the entire infrastructure from one centralized location. Microsoft System Center enables hospitality operations to be proactive to changes within the system and environment, thus giving a higher level of quality and service to guests.

Guest interactions: Guests today largely decide when and how they interact with individual properties, from before the trip begins, until well after the trip is over. Of particular interest are the interactions that take place on-property, during a guest's or patrons visit. Guests have been slow to adopt kiosks in most areas of the industry, and many properties lack the infrastructure to capitalize on the devices guests carry and rely on for communications. Using new innovations in guest technologies and matching those to guest preferences can help hospitality companies reach guests beyond limited staff interactions.

Mobility: The platform coupled with Windows Mobile gives hospitality companies the opportunity to provide mobility-based services to their guests, such as travel alerts, check-in/check-out, reservations, media, etc. via their mobile devices. Additionally, Mobility Services enable companies to deliver more relevant contextual marketing and promotions furthering guest loyalty and revenue uplift.